Discussion Questions
1. Salley Vickers' novel has been held up by numerous reviewers and readers as a refreshing and innovative alternative to much of what's out there on the contemporary fiction shelves today. What do they mean? What is it about Miss Garnet's Angel that has struck such a chord with so many readers internationally?
2. One writer described Vickers' novel as a book that stubbornly defies any neat categorization. So what kind of a novel is this? A romance? A mystery? A tale of religious awakening? How does Vickers' novel depart from every genre to which we try to assign it? How would you describe Miss Garnet's Angel to a friend?
3. In Miss Garnet's Angel, Salley Vickers treats us to a narrative within a narrative of personal odysseys and spiritual awakenings separated by millennia; of sexual repression and revitalization; of ideological feuds and rapturous epiphanies. Through it all, an overarching, timeless vision of "a world poised between truth and lies" shines through-filtered through the enigmatic character of contemporary Venice itself. "What a world she had entered," Julia marvels early on. "A world of strange ritual, penumbras, rapture." Discuss the author's writing style.
4. Describe the change Julia Garnet undergoes over the course of her stay in Venice. What effects do the events and discoveries of her visit have on her sense of self, as a communist grounded in atheism and as a woman generally wary of life's "irrational" realms, whether romantic, mystical, or spiritual? What-and who-are the catalysts for this change?
5. Describe each of the other characters in this novel. Vera. Carlo. The Cutforths. The Monsignore. Sarah. Toby. Azarias. Tobit. What are the motivations underlying their choices and actions?
6. "Long ago she had decided that history does not repeat itself; but perhaps when a thing was true it went on returning in different likenesses, borrowing from what went before, finding new ways to declare itself." Discuss the parallels Vickers establishes between the narrative of Tobias and the Angel and that of Julia, Toby, and Sarah.
7. Consider the way the author's narrative establishes dual meanings for "blindness": as a physical, unalterable condition on one hand, and as a more abstract reference to one's capacity for empathy, love, or self-awareness on the other.
8. "Can't be doing with that," Miss Garnet tells herself upon first seeing the picture of the Virgin and Christ Child above her bed at Campo Angelo Raffaele. With this moment, Vickers establishes Julia's atheist-communist wariness regarding religious iconography-and also foreshadows the radical nature of the spiritual and emotional transformations to come. Chart the course of Julia's awakening: discuss the specific moments and scenes in which Vickers illuminates her heroine's mounting intoxication with religious pageantry and mystery.
9. With the opening lines of the novel, Salley Vickers introduces readers to an ancillary character who comes to haunt the proceedings of all that follows: Death. "It leaves a hole in the fabric of things which those who are left behind try to repair." Elsewhere, Tobias invokes death as a metaphor for sexual penetration. Discuss the novel's other characterizations of and reflections on death. What, for example, is Julia's conception of death-and how does it evolve, particularly leading up to her last night in Venice?
10. "We cannot commission desire," Julia reflects at one point, referring not only to herself but also to Carlo. To what degree, and on what grounds, does Julia come to feel a sense of solidarity with Carlo, of all people? Explain.
11. Re-read the epigraph by John Ruskin. How do his words speak to the themes and preoccupations of Vickers' interwoven narratives?
12. How does Salley Vickers' vision of Venice compare, inform, and/or add to your own personal experiences with the city?
13. What parallels and distinctions might we draw between the lives of Julia and the Monsignore? Although they've both been given, for much of their lives, to starkly different philosophical ideologies, what fundamental beliefs and traits do the two of them share?
14. What were your understandings of the Angel Raphael and Zoroastrianism before you read Miss Garnet's Angel? Did Vickers' novel inform and/or complicate these understandings? How?
15. Julia Garnet is, among other things, a woman struggling to emerge from the long shadow cast by her father's censure and abuse. How successful, finally, has she been in doing so?
16. What sort of a man was Julia's father? What picture of him emerges to us through Julia's intermittent recollections?
17. Standing with Vera before "The Last Judgement" at the Tintoretto church, Julia wonders, "What did it mean to be weighed in a balance and found wanting?" And later, in her journal, she writes, "What does my life really amount to?" How are these questions ultimately resolved?
18. What is the Bridge of Separation?
19. Near the end of the novel, Julia encounters a young woman on a train named Saskia. As they talk, Julia experiences "the strangest sensation." And later, Julia reflects that "the meeting had crystallized something for her." What has happened here? What issues of identification, regret, and mutual recognition might Julia be coming to terms with in this scene?
20. The various mysteries and awakenings in Miss Garnet's Angel all play out against a Venetian backdrop that is perpetually in danger of annihilation, of being swallowed by the relentless sea tides. "Each day Venice sinks by just so much of a fraction." How does this tension speak to and enrich the sense of instability and flux underlying Julia's own beliefs and assumptions? At what points in the narrative-particularly in the final pages of the book, when Julia has returned to Venice after the wedding-does Vickers make the metaphor plain?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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